


The Last Queen of Númenor

by LaurelCrowned



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Antediluvian Númenor, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/F, Gaslighting, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Númenor, nonconsensual drug use, warnings for the following
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 03:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurelCrowned/pseuds/LaurelCrowned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tar-Miriel lost her birthright, her people, and her home. She did not let them go easily. </p><p>A collection of various writings featuring Tar-Miriel, some more aggressively AU than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erukyurmë

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Tar-Miriel makes her first pilgrimage to Meneltarma.

She was dressed in the white and royal blue of her house, a tiny figure holding tight to Tar-Palantir’s hand as they finally reached the summit. Even as young as she was, Miriel could feel the reverential silence of their holy place wrapping her in its arms. She looked around with her usual bright and bold curiosity, taking in her surroundings with an open-mouthed and wide-eyed awe.

The narrow trail abruptly opened up ahead of them and she squeezed her father’s hand in surprise at the sight of the two stone Eagles carved into the mountain. They were life-sized, with wingspans longer than many of the biggest ships in the harbor, and they seemed living things emerging from the rock itself. They flanked the entrance to the great expanse of flat land before the little processional wending its way up the mountain. Their outer wings stretched far over the open air to either side while their inner wings met in an arch high above the wide space that the party must cross to reach the flattened summit. The Eagles’ beaks could swallow a tall man whole, each of their talons were bigger than the largest horses she had ever seen. Their fierce eyes seemed alive and watching, judging all who came before them.

But the king never paused and she took courage in his ever-present strength of will, a strength that patiently and enduringly pulled others along in his wake like the waves when she played in the sea, and Miriel was not afraid. In a deep place somewhere behind her heart she could almost hear the silence as a noise itself, an absence that was overpowering but somehow far from empty. The pressure of it and of those eyes of rock upon her made her tremble with a feeling she could not name.

As they passed under the shadow of the wings, the king released her and strode forward alone. Her mother’s hand fell on her shoulder, gathering the child against her skirts, a reminder of Miriel’s promise not to speak on Meneltarma if allowed to ascend the peak with the rest of the party. Her mother’s parents were behind her and behind them were the royal guards, though they were empty-handed and wore only soft robes. Armor and weapons were not allowed on the mountain, and they had left them behind at the stopping place far below.

In fact they all, even the king, wore but the simplest, softest of clothing though it was of the best quality. In some elder times, it was told, not even clothing was permitted at the summit and all who came there, from child to queen, did so naked. Now, though, only the oldest and most enduring traditions of Númenor remained - the climb, the silence, the monarch’s prayer.

The trek had been long but not difficult. Miriel had marveled at the smoothness of the path that twisted and turned through the otherwise nearly impassible mountainside. No mortal hand had hewn this way through the rock; it had been at the Powers’ discretion that it was set into the mountain so that all of Númenor, even the elderly and the young, could attend the Three Prayers without being overtaxed in body.

Even when Palantir, still called Inziladún at that time, ascended the mount for the first time in generations, he had found a place that was not wildly overgrown but as tidy and lonely and still as it was this day. No birds or animals lived on the mountain, no butterflies came near it, and as the small group of Faithful who had come with them passed under the archway they became the only living things to breathe in the slightly thin air. No buildings were allowed and nothing was ever left behind when they descended.

The king led them all onwards until, apparently feeling some kind of proper moment, he stopped and stood still. He stood with his back to them all, waiting until the entire procession of about fifty people arrived and had settled into an orderly crowd behind him. Miriel and her mother stood just behind him, the girl now clasping her mother’s hand and hugging herself against her legs. 

At a time he seemed to arrive at by some internal decision, Tar-Palantir knelt on the soft green grass and all those behind him followed suit.

He began speaking the traditional prayer of the New Year, words Miriel had memorized but did not understand, for they were in Quenya and she had not yet started her tutoring in the language. The wind stirred a little, and to the little girl pressed tightly against her mother, it was as if the breeze picked up her father’s words and carried them away like feathers caught in a rising thermal.

For all its solemnity the prayer was not a long one, and at the conclusion, Miriel at long last looked up and searched and searched the skies. This was why she had begged and pleaded to come although she was several years younger than most heirs were when they climbed Meneltarma for the first time. Most children her age were not allowed the honor for fear they could not keep quiet, but she had wanted to see the Eagles.

The princess was not the only one with head turned toward heaven’s vault to see if they would come. It had never happened in Palantir’s life, had never happened in the time of his father - for obvious reasons. At each of the Three Prayers the Great Eagles used to come and circle the peak, sent by Lord Manwë himself, a sign of the connection that yet lived on between the Valar and the descendants of those who shed their blood in the War of Wrath to defeat the Powers’ and Men’s greatest enemy. But the old ways had been abandoned by the populist kings, and though he faithfully observed the traditions every year, Palantir had never seen the enormous birds. It was a thing whispered in Roménna and by the Faithful in the palace in Armenelos that the Powers were furious, that the King’s Men had driven then away, for why else would the Eagles not come?

After the blue sky remained empty for a long moment, then another and another, the adults turned away with disappointment carved on their faces, though they remained silent. They filed down the mountain again with a guard at their head so that the king would be last to leave as he had been first to arrive.

But Miriel kept searching though the white-yellow sunlight was blindingly piercing and she had to blink away tears. She started as her father picked her up and settled her in his arms, kissing her forehead. Her mother came to them and then she was pressed between both her parents as the queen wrapped her arms around them. A strange peace came over her, and though she was disappointed, she snuggled closer to her father and rested her head in the crook of his neck.

The royal family was left alone in that silent place, and Miriel’s mind was drifting into sleep by the time the king and queen passed under the arching wings and began the descent. Her head tucked over her father’s shoulder now, she blinked awake just enough that the stone Eagles’ piercing eyes were the last thing she saw before dozing off, wondering if she would ever, ever get to see the real ones. Maybe when she became queen..

The sunlight and silence and safety wrapped her tightly, and Miriel dreamed of soaring on the wind, light as a feather and fearless as a gull.


	2. Asunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tar-Miriel, called Zimraphel, meets the Zigûr for the first time.
> 
>  
> 
> **(WARNING for gaslighting, nonconsensual drug use, and domestic violence.)**

The sea was black as the hunk of hardened lava that sat on a dusty shelf in her childhood playroom, a token gift from a seafaring lord’s son who once thought to court her. A memento from a world so far in the past, a time when her heart boiled with living rock and spewed ash on those who sought to cool it. Had she ever been so young?

"Your majesty."

She tore her gaze away from the tossing waves, realizing that her guardsmen had been attempting to get her attention for some time. 

"The ship has docked, your majesty," he said, patiently, as if to a child. It interrupted her memory of another dock, another time - no. No, that must have only been a dream.

"That never was," she reminded herself. "I forget. I forget sometimes. I think silly things and forget. That’s all." The guards, used to her self-talk, did not mark it and only took her arm with the fond paternalism of one assigned to the Lady’s detail for many years.

Not all those there were her usual contingent, some having gone to help with unloading the ships. A black-haired youngster, barely into his fiftieth year, stared openly at the guard taking such familiarities with the Queen. Before he could open his mouth to protest, another guard sharply grabbed his helmet and pulled his ear down to angrily whisper something that she could hear in bits and pieces.

”..don’t dare..she’s not..cannot expect her to..been like this since..sworn to..your life if you tell..by your _balls_ , you little bastard! So don’t you _ever_..”

Yes. He was new, wasn’t he? Silly fellow. She wasn’t safe by herself. They all knew that. Couldn’t be trusted. That was why she must always have the guards. They knew to take care of her. She sighed as the guard fetched the youngster’s helmeted head a ringing smack with his gauntlet. He would learn. It was none of her affair.

Her feet hurt. She hated wearing these shoes. When would this be over so she could return to Armenelos, her usual rooms and the sweet-tasting medicine that brought blissful sleep? 

She stood upon a pavilion in the square in some city by the shore, not entirely sure how she had gotten there. People were all around, some staring in open surprise at her. Was she surprising? But most were making noise, cheering and screaming, chanting a name that she could not quite make out. Some broke into song. 

"What are we doing here.." what was this one’s name? No matter. "..Guardsman?" she asked, but her voice was covered up as the singing rose to a climax. Then all went still.

Oh. Then _he_ was back. He had gone somewhere, she remembered now. How long had he been gone? She couldn’t recall, and felt momentary panic tickle her throat. A snakes’-tongue of fire. She wished it doused with sweetness and darkness. 

It was him, shining and solid and powerful. She rarely saw him, though sometimes they passed when her maids took her through the gardens. He was very gentle, very kind. He made sure to come to her and kiss her hands courteously, the soul of attentiveness. ( _“Are you well, my lady-wife? Do the healers treat you with care? Do you wish more paints for your easels, more dresses for your closets?”_ )

She could only shake her head. For he had given her everything, hadn’t he? Cared for her. Taken responsibility, because she couldn’t. He told her she should be grateful. She _was_ grateful.

There were always others with him at those times in the gardens, sometimes people whose faces she remembered vaguely. But it was like recalling a life drowned by the seas, a shadow-shape at best. When they looked at her they were sad, and so she did not like to walk in the gardens often.

He was dragging a person behind him, though it was his men who held tight the chains and only the loose end clanked in his hands. The crowd murmured and parted as their lord made his way to the dais where she stood. But it was not her lord she looked at but the figure in chains, a shadow-shape held by pitifully weak and tarnished silver. No. It must have been the sun in her eyes, for he was golden and fair, and the chains were thick as a man’s wrist. He was beautiful. He made her think of the caress of velvet, a whispered hush of silk on sweat-dappled skin, musk and heat and unspoken promise. Oh, but he was beautiful.

Her lord leaned in and kissed her. Her eyes did not leave the glory of the one bound before her. The crowd was happy and cheering as she was kissed. The lovely creature smiled at her. Was the sun in her eyes again? _Shadow-shape._ Deep in her chipped and brittle heart, the snake-tongue of flame darted to the surface. 

"My people! We have returned in even greater glory than we left, and have brought to heel the one that dared test the might of Númenor!" 

So her lord spoke, but she paid him no mind because the beautiful one of gold and anger was smiling at her. His anger was hidden, but she could see it. She felt sure he thought none could see it. She knew about hiding because was she not hidden, kept safe? He kept his anger safe like a wounded bird. Like her.

The men jerked the chains, made him kneel before her and before her lord. But his eyes never left her own, not through the long moments as her lord spoke. Not through the singing and cheering, nor the long row of courtiers who came and bowed and spoke. The snake-tongue sought for the wounded bird, crawling through the air, scenting with blistering heat.

Her lord had stopped talking, but she didn’t notice until the beautiful one’s head snapped sharply to the side and his eyes left hers. She gasped and blinked in surprise. Her lord stood between the two of them now, but she could still see the face of the shadow-shape (one or the other or both?) and it bled now, a mark the shape of a ring cut into his cheek. It was wrong, this mark upon his beautiful face. She bore a mark just like it, where no one was allowed to see. She had those marks. Questing tongue met trembling feathers and found talons beneath. Someone was screaming. 

Her lord was calling for her guards. He was angry now, but it was because she was screaming. She shouldn’t do that. She stopped. The crowds were staring again. She was taken away, the young guard white-faced and trembling. The golden-winged, injured, beautiful one behind her spoke and it was a bell in her heart. A funereal tolling. She was screaming again and didn’t know why. 

It was later and she was back in her rooms, her medicine in the beaker prepared for her to drink down its sickly-sweetness.

The sea was black as she stood at the door to the balcony in the great house that overlooked the coast. Her handmaid was busy stoking the fire in the room behind her. It was cold and she shivered in her robe. It was time to sleep, but the snake-tongue would not let her.

The salty wind toyed with her hair. A step. _Fear._ A step. _Pain._ A step. A wounded bird crying, its wings pounding at the bars. She looked up as the stars looked down to meet her. The beaker slipped from her hand, the sound of its shattering on the rocks far below lost in the crashing tide. 

"Milady?" The concerned maid – a matron, really, of thrice her own years – placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned, the flames from the fireplace flickering light across her face like snake-tongues. "You should not be –" the handmaid said, then stopped. She took a step backwards and then another. She looked upon her queen and fell upon her knees, for Tar-Miriel, last Queen of Númenor, looked back with the fires of earth and sky given fuel and set once more to kindle. 

They thought her coal, to be burned and used and turned to dust. And for a time perhaps the clinging ash had even made her believe it, too. She had forgotten so much. Herself. She had forgotten her people. She had forgotten her father and mother and all those who came before. 

A tolling bell, a shadow-shape. A beautiful man with the wounded bird that would plunge from the sky like lightning to fall upon a stinking shit-spattered pigeon. And her lord thought to hold the leather glove and jesses, but held the thinnest tarnished silver chain.

She found that the edges of her fire-forged heart were sharp as volcanic glass, and the seas of Númenor were black as blood upon the shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Her father was a prophet whose foresight was so strong, even those who opposed him feared his prophesies. I believe Tar-Miriel would have inherited his abilities. I see her as very much like Cassandra of Troy.
> 
> This chapter is part of a complex headcanon about how Pharazôn forced Miriel into marriage and stole her throne.


	3. The Assassin Queen of Elenna-Nórê

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Zigûr woke her. Her anger kept her awake. 
> 
> **(WARNING for nonconsensual drug use/addiction, domestic violence, human sacrifice, and gaslighting.)**

It was old Amandil who taught her to fight and kill, helped her expand her mental abilities and gave her the thin-bladed knives that had been in his family since the War of Wrath. It was some rheumy-eyed old woman who claimed to have trained under Elrond Peredhel while visiting Endórê who taught her the ways of poison and antidote. The young men and women of the Resistance taught her to dance in the dark, to wear gray to blend with shadow, to paint her face just so to avoid detection, to alter her appearance so her own mother might not have recognized her.

Miriel was the Resistance’s knife in the dark. No one was better placed nor had as good a cover or as strong a hatred for Pharazôn to take down key players of the King’s Men. Her powers of the mind offered some foresight, a bit of insight into the hearts of others, but most powerfully an ability to project a blankness that hid her from all but the strongest minds. At the height of her reign of the alleyways, she could mingle through a crowd, slip a blade into a heart, and be away before the body hit the ground with no one having seen her.

There were many reports of assassinations, and often some member of the Faithful was hauled to the dungeons or rounded up for the altar on such suspicion. Miriel attended all of the sacrifices, knowing they had given their lives for hers even if they had not realized it. Sometimes she was able to sneak them out to safety or slip them a killing draught or powerful sleep-inducing drug, allowing them a slightly less horrific end. But not always.

No one suspected the pitiable, mad, invalid queen could ever be capable of any sort of collusion. It was a ruse that cost her dearly to keep up, as sometimes in order to protect her cover she had to take again the drugs that had so devoured her life. Other times, she killed to protect herself and others of the Resistance. She suffered physically, mentally, emotionally. She channeled it into anger.

The Resistance leaders began worrying about her being careless, betraying their efforts of a secret war. Some of them worried about the toll it took on Miriel herself, but many others saw her as only a tool. She began doubting whether even the Faithful would call her their queen, if they could ever gain control of the throne.

Yet Amandil was her strongest supporter, and loved her like a daughter, and he became the father she had lost so long ago. She never stopped grieving for him. The Faithful knew they could not survive an open civil war. The more peaceable among them pleaded for the entire population of Roménna to flee to Middle-Earth, leaving Númenor to its fate. The others would not give up their home, hoping against hope that with enough destabilization, they could wrest control away from Pharazôn. Miriel was among the latter.

She could not count the number of times she stood by her cousin-husband’s side, fingering a blade tucked inside a sleeve, thinking how easy it would be to end it. But it would have meant the end of her hopes for her people, too. Pharazôn’s heart was the only one she ever truly wished to pierce, and she never did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why? Because assassin-queen Miriel and underground Faithful rebellion in Númenor, dammit. :|


	4. The King is Dead (Long Live the Queen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ar-Pharazôn is dead and the Faithful must flee.

Tar-Miriel felt her knees buckle and she fairly collapsed onto her settee. Her circle of handmaidens was still standing frozen in shock as the youngest of their number stood dripping with sweat and panting from having run through the streets and then the hallways of the palace.

"Who _fucking_ did it?” she murmured, mind whirling. Her eyes were sharp and distant as she thought. It never occurred to her it might have been an accident or a natural death; she was not that lucky. “If it was one of ours – no, it doesn’t matter. They will assume it was regardless.”

She folded her arms over her knees, bending slightly to curl her body and bow her head where she sat. Tar-Miriel did not have time to rejoice at this news because if killing Pharazôn had been an option, she would have done it long ago. Suddenly there was a power vacuum, suddenly the King’s Men would assume the Faithful had murdered the king. Whatever lordling decided to rise up to take his place would first deal harshly with the Faithful in retaliation. And the biggest danger of all – the Zigûr would still be on the island to make his mischief.

She had to move fast if she were to salvage the slightest bit of hope. Her handmaids were looking to her now.

"Arm yourselves," she murmured. Her gaze flicked up and went around the circle of about a dozen women, the youngest in her twenties and the eldest in her eighties. The queen rested her eyes on each in turn, her jaw firm and a fire familiar to them smoldering in her gaze. A momentary paused and they leapt into action, retrieving knives and poison-tipped darts scattered around the room in secret hiding places.

"Farawen." A small, slight woman of middling years looked up from where she checked the strapping on a jagged-edged hunting knife hidden under a ruffle. Tar-Miriel steepled her hands together under her chin. Her face was blank. "Get to Elendil. Tell him I order the evacuation and to send reinforcements." She rattled off a code that made every woman in the room flinch.

"Yes, it’s that bad," she said firmly, rising to her feet. "We have come to the end now. What we do in these next hours will determine whether there is a new beginning beyond it."

She called to another of her handmaidens, this one of the eldest among them and a doughty woman indeed who had lost her husband and son to the pyre. She had no fear left in her, not even for what Miriel now ordered her to do.

"Find the Zigûr and shadow him."

The woman nodded without comment, though undoubtedly a few of the others wondered as she left whether they would see her again in life.

Miriel went to a secret compartment in her bookcase, fiddled with the latches, and retrieved a brown-wrapped package covered with dust. She tore off the paper and shook out the royal blue cloak inside, embroidered on the back with the White Tree in all its glory. It was a thing for a king – had been her father’s – and its edges dragged on the floor behind her as she threw it about her shoulders and fastened it. Another handmaid offered her the silver circlet of stars that she wore to state occasions, but she shook her head. “Not that one. Not today.”

She pulled her hair down, letting it fall long and loose along her shoulders. He liked it when she wore her hair up. She would never wear it up again.

Tar-Miriel checked her own armaments, the throwing knives strapped to the inside of her forearms and the poison-tipped darts sewn into the bodice of her gown. “The rest of you, with me.”

They spilled out into the grand hallways of the palace, the handmaids fanning out around her in a practiced shape that would protect her from all angles of attack. Some minor courtiers tried to approach only to be rebuffed by the women’s silence and fast pace. Thank Eru he had met his death in the city and not here in the palace, Miriel thought, for that was where the greatest chaos would be centered right now.

The women did not know where Miriel led them, but they followed without question. She had bled in their arms and held them as they wept and dared discovery to climb Meneltarma to honor their dead before the Powers and Eru Ilúvatar. They were the Queen’s Women.

Her destination was not far. The scepter of state waited in a glass case under lock and key in the king’s antechamber off the main throne room. The place smelled of him still. Miriel gently shoved through her guards and stood in front of the case. She stared at it silently; Pharazôn alone had the key.

Her face scrunched up into a rictus of rage that would not have looked unusual on the face of a charging bear. In a motion so fast it could hardly be followed with the eye, her bare fist met the glass and shattered it into a thousand shards. She ignored the pain as it cut her hand, ignored the stinging as she scraped her wrist against the jagged edges to reach in and grasp the scepter. Her blood ran down her clenched fingers and dribbled over the golden symbol of authority as she held it in front of her, staring at it as if trying to memorize every detail.

Tar-Miriel carelessly plucked away the bits of glass embedded in her hand and the blood flowed more freely, baptizing the scepter with scarlet. Her reign, however short, would begin with blood and likely enough would end with it.

"Call the pages and have them contact the lords," she commanded one of the maids, without turning to look at her. "Tell them they are called to a war meeting of the Council."

She rounded on them then and even those who knew the strength of her hidden ferocity stepped back in fear at the flame rising within her. It seemed as if some vein of Elven-blood had been sliced open along with her hand and now it was a daughter of an earlier time that stood before them. “You two -” she spoke to some of the more persuasive, politically savvy of her assistants. “Bring them in one at a time. Make whatever lies or promises you want, just get them here. Don’t let them near the throne room until I send for them.”

She swept away, the remaining Queen’s Women alongside her. She flung open the doors to the throne room, its extravagant walls echoing with their quick steps. The grand room was empty this time of day with Pharazôn gone, but it would not remain so for long. They had to secure this room because the military commanders would come looking, would seek to gather here for their war-conference. Whether or not they would come before the contingent of Faithful warriors arrived was questionable. Nine women could not hold it forever, however well trained, but they would hold it for a time.

In another part of Númenor riders were flung up on the fastest horses, fleeing for Roménna. Plans long made were put into action. Palantiri were uncovered and messages passed. Ships readied. The Faithful could not hold the island by force; they would flee to Endórë rather than risk extinction. Elendil would lead them and rule them as her regent, and – if she did not call for them or come to them, if she died this day, if Númenor was forsaken by those who loved the Powers – he would rule as king, her designated heir.

Tar-Miriel never hesitated as she approached the dais. Her feet carried her up it with the grace of a hunting cat moving through the trees. Then she was seated on the throne for the first time in her life, her scepter in her hand and blood dripping down to stain the carven stone arm of the Seat of Númenor that should have been hers long ago. There was no coronation and when she next left this seat, it would likely be because she was dead.

"Guard me and the door," she ordered softly, a dangerous quiet in her voice. "Every lord and lady that comes here this day will bend their knee and swear unwavering fealty to me, or they will not leave this room alive. Flank them and take them quietly. Drag the bodies into the antechamber. We’ll burn them later on their own damned pyre."

The last Ruling Queen of Númenor sat back in her throne as her handmaids took up their positions at her side and at the door, grim-faced and knowing that their lady had just ordered them to their deaths. They accepted it all the same.

Tar-Miriel toyed with the scepter. She had thought it would be heavier, but after all, it was only a symbol. The true weight of leadership was carried in the heart.

"And if the Zigûr comes," she whispered, the words falling like drops of blood into the silence, "Then let him come."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pure wish fulfillment within my assassin-queen 'verse. 
> 
> I like to imagine the Queen's Women live on in stories and songs and statues, beloved and honored by Elves and Men alike for their courage and sacrifice.


	5. Oiolarë

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Isle of Gift is lost, but she is found.

She came back to herself with seaweed tickling her face and the taste of brine on her lips.

She hurt terribly, every motion stirring agony. Tar-Miriel whimpered and reluctantly tried to move, then panicked when she realized she was floating in the sea. A full moon gilded the rolling waves with silver and there was no land anywhere nearby.

The queen kicked forcefully, wincing at the pain as she tried to get herself upright in the water, but something held her where she was. Scales pressed against her bare skin – she was naked, the woman realized – and arms with the strength of anchors held her. She could feel thick, slippery bands of muscle constricting her from chest to ankle. Looking down at her body just under the surface of the waves, she glimpsed sinuous tentacles holding her up in a gentle but unbreakable grip.

Filled with dread, Tar-Miriel craned her head to look behind her and screamed in terror; a being that was a woman and was not a woman held her. The seaweed that tickled the queen’s face was the creature’s hair, long and loose and tangled, draping down shoulders that glimmered green and shiny in the moonlight. Coral grew up the side of her throat. She had no breasts.

She stared down at Tar-Miriel with wide, lidless eyes that glowed pearly-silver like the moon. Fingers bedecked with stacks upon stacks of rings reached to the queen's face and stopped; hesitated; then touched her cheek as if caressing a thing so fragile it would break at the slightest pressure.

"I saved you," the sea-creature said, tenderly brushing the woman's wet hair from her face. Tar-Miriel shivered at the touch. Memories surged in her and then she was remembering.

She remembered the great and empty expanse of bared sand as the sea retreated far, revealing the bones of wrecked ships and enormous petrified trees deep along the shore. She stumbled once more on the shaking ground that fell open to swallow the children crying for their mothers and mothers crying for their children. She felt again the change in air pressure booming in her ears as she climbed the rough mountainside with bloody hands, praying for mercy all the while. And then –

_I saved you._

She was huge, easily three times Miriel’s size, and she was terrifying. But she was terrifyingly beautiful. She was Uinen. No child born to Númenor would ever fail to recognize the sea-spirit who had long been their protector, one the Faithful held in honor equal to the Valar.

"I could not let you go," the Maia whispered, a tremor in her words. She sighed and it was a soft, sad echo, mournful as a solitary gull’s cry. "I was not allowed to save the others but I could not let you go, sweet queen of Men."

It was a rescue Tar-Miriel could not yet appreciate. “They’re dead,” she rasped, beginning to weep. “They’re all dead! It’s gone – my home is gone!” The woman moaned in grief, leaning into the elemental creature who held her head and shoulders above the water. The tentacles curled tighter and the waves, gentler than Miriel would ever have thought possible after the great cataclysm, softly rocked her.

"I watched the island rise and swam beneath the ships of your ancestors. You sang to me and offered wreaths and gifts. Begged my protection for your fleets. For these centuries I have led my husband away, bedeviled him to send his storms elsewhere, for I heard your cries." The moonlight eyes dimmed. "I hid in the depths as your king brought my fallen brother to your land. I herded the whales away and could only watch as Eru Ilúvatar judged the Isle of Gift for its crimes."

The great head inclined and green lips pressed a kiss against her forehead. “And still I could not let you go. Do you not remember, Miriel?”

"N-no," the woman whimpered. How long had it been since any had called her by the name of childhood, the name Pharazôn had taken from her along with so much else? She could not recall, and did not understand what the Maia asked of her. No one of the isle had seen anything of the Powers in more than a generation. Uinen didn’t seem worried or bothered by her answer, and only resumed carding pale fingers through the salt-soaked hair.

"We met only once, when you were very small. It does not surprise me that you do not recall. But all your life have you honored us, child. You braided the _oiolairë_. You sang to me. You whispered my name as you stood before Nimloth. You pleased me, the one I watched from the shallows as she grew up. As she suffered and was betrayed and still did not turn away from me. A sea-queen, a small sister of my heart.”

"Look," Uinen said then, and pointed to the horizon. Miriel could only just make out a smudge against the water, a place touched by the light a little above the waves at this distance. "Do you recognize it? It is all that remains."

It took a moment for the shape of the rock to register. The peak had always loomed above them, visible from nearly any point on the island, but she had never seen it like this. The queen cried out long and low, struggling desperately – she must get out of the water! Down there below them were caverns and tombs, the tomb of her father, the little sitting-room where she had liked to take breakfast. The great, echoing throne-room with a ceiling so tall the pillars seemed to extend into heaven.

Númenor had been so tall, her people so strong, yet now it was brought low. Only that which served to honor the Powers and Eru Ilúvatar remained, with all else doomed to a cold and loveless grave. It was _Meneltarma_. Meneltarma, where she and her people had not been allowed to stand in respectful silence since Tar-Palantir’s death. It was the place she had thought to reach to beg forgiveness, plead for mercy. She had not reached it, but her lady Uinen had reached her all the same.

Tar-Miriel could not stand being in the water with the ghosts. They were down where she could not see them, but she could feel them swimming up to drag her below. She clawed at her rescuer, but the Maia held her still, sighing a song of wind through wetland-reeds. 

"It will always be there, child," she spoke into Tar-Miriel’s ear. "You can struggle – you _will_ struggle – but it will always be there waiting in the cold and the dark. You cannot escape it. You must accept it. Or what I have risked for you, I risked in vain."

The queen looked up once more and licked her salt-rimed lips. “What will you do with me?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. There was an emptiness in her that felt large enough to swallow the sea itself and uncover the bones of loss and fear bleached by sun and sand. “Will I die now?”

The curls that bound her tightened sharply, briefly, and something large and strong lashed the water furiously until the waves churned into froth. The queen held still, a speck adrift in all the seas and feeling so small within and without. Tar-Miriel could not fully see what the Maia looked like under the water, but there was nothing human about it. The head and arms were the tip of an iceberg, and perhaps only for her benefit.

"You are mine now, sea-queen," the Maia whispered so fiercely that the woman flinched to hear the strength in it. "You were given to the sea and the sea shall keep you."

Miriel looked into those ithilien eyes and thought that perhaps this was what drowning felt like.

"Please don’t let me go," she begged softly.

Uinen smiled and the coils tightened possessively, as did the arms that held her. In a moment more they moved through the waves with impossible speed, silver gilding skin and scale alike. If the water was cold, Tar-Miriel never felt it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One take on how Miriel survived the Downfall, not necessarily compliant with my other AUs.


	6. Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Survival does not equal victory.

Miriel hunched over her desk, its contents thrown onto the floor in a mess of torn paper and spilled ink. She did not look up at the worried Elf-lord who watched her silently. Her palms pressed flat against the smooth, dark wood, nails scratching uselessly at the seamless tabletop. Her shoulders heaved with each ragged breath. Her unruly hair spilled over her bowed head, hiding her face behind a curtain of black that had begun to shade to gray.

"Sometimes I think –" she muttered, then drew another shaky breath, feeling light-headed. " – sometimes I think the only reason I survived is because, were I dead, I would escape from Mandos and find that cave where he rests. I would claw out his eyes. Set my teeth to his throat until I tore the breath from his body. Grind my heel into his balls until they burst. They say our souls remember the form of our bodies. I could do it, I would find a way. And that’s the thing.”

The woman laughed darkly and her shoulders hitched. Her hands were fists, nails now taking the bloody retribution from her flesh that they could not exact on the hardwood desk.

"I think the only reason I am alive is because being denied vengeance is the price for my failures."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miriel-survives-the-Downfall AU. Elf-lord is Elrond, trying to help his many-times-removed niece.


	7. Caves of the (Un)Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Army of Númenor that assaulted the Blessed Realm is not as forgotten as she wishes it were.

When the nights are particularly bad, Miriel thinks she can make a good case that Calion was the single most evil motherfucker who ever lived.

After all, how evil do you have to be that you are not allowed to die? That you are denied the very Gift that stamped Men as the Children of Ilúvatar? That the one thing that caused Morgoth to fear your people, is the one thing now beyond you?

_(She calls him Calion, always, because he would have hated it. He took away her name. Now she has taken away his. A poor trade, she thinks, but she will take what she can get.)_

It was his fear of death that drove him to assault Aman, and in the end, he got what he wanted. He didn’t die.

 _I bet he longs for death, trapped under tons of rock,_ she thinks sometimes, and is torn between being glad for his fate and being angry that he is still alive when so many were lost. (Eru knows, she is angry that she is still alive when so many were lost.)

Miriel has a lot of nightmares about it, because King’s Men or not, so many of her people are trapped under a giant rockfall until the Dagor Dagorath. She saw it happen. In her mind, with the powers awoken by the Zigûr’s arrival, she saw the great cliffs tumble onto the army. Saw them swallowed up by darkness.

She has made her peace with the sea, finally, after many years. But she has had a touch of claustrophobia ever since the Downfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this particular piece of AU, Miriel survived the Downfall and went on to live among the Faithful survivors in Middle-earth. As mentioned before, it's my personal canon that she inherited her father's gift(curse) of prophesy.


	8. Dreams in Exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The children dream.

It is when the children born in Endorë begin having the same nightmare as their parents that she knows with terrible certainty that none of the blood of Atalantë will ever be free of the past. 

They are stamped, marked in disfavor and dishonor, for even the most innocent among them born to the Faithful-in-Exile still suffer the Dream.

Why? She walks the edge of the sea, collecting rocks. Why?

How many times, in village after village, has she comforted a screaming child woken to terror in the night? As if in some farce of mercy, Miriel herself never dreams of the great green wave that rose to meet her on Meneltarma, cold as the breath of death and plumed with foam like a lathered horse pushed past all endurance.

Her nightmares are of different things than what others suffer, most often the threatening Eagle-clouds that were proof of the Powers’ displeasure and frequently the distant cries carried to her ears on the wind. Sometimes she dreams of the endless climb on the rocky mountainside - for the smoothly curving path to the top was blocked with rubble - which left her hands and knees bloodied and torn. When she woke on the beach naked and alone and undeniably alive, it was to the knife-sharp pain of seawater in wounds and the sharper pain of an endless grief.

But why would she need to dream of it when she alone of all the survivors met it face to face? The great wave was a thing immutable and unstoppable, a destruction in it that she could not attribute to Lord Ossë’s wildness. The noise was indescribable. She wonders sometimes that she is not deaf from the roaring, but she should more certainly be dead, and her thoughts skitter away from delving too deeply into that abyss.

She selects a stone, flat and round, and with a twist of shoulder and wrist casts it out upon the water. The tide is out and the waves subdued as if in sympathy for her troubled heart, but she has lived by the laws of the sea too long to seek compassion there. The stone skips away over the glassy surface waiting past the lapping breakers. A second soon joins it before sinking below the surface. By the time she has selected a third from the little pile of rocks, the salt of her tears wets it before it touches the salt of the ocean.

Something in her that has been broken and poorly mended time and time again breaks once more, an infection in her soul and a wound in all her people that has not been allowed to close. Here by the sea she allows herself to think on it at last, the fear that haunts her - that the wound of their folly will never be _allowed_ to close.

"Haven’t we suffered enough?" she screams, and she finds herself waist-deep in the water with no memory of how she got there. The sand shifts uneasily beneath her toes. "Have we not lost enough, paid enough, that our children must suffer too? They have no heritage left to them, no future but one of struggle and war. And yet they dream a thing they never saw, nor ever needed to see!"

Her hands are fists and the edges of a stone cuts lines into one, so that she feels the familiar sting of salt and blood.

"Do you think we will forget?" she snarls, wishing she might be a shark and gnash rows and rows of serrated teeth in her anger. "Do you think we could forget? You think you must make us remember? That you must make our children remember what every day of their lives reminds them?”

The bloodied stone joined the others at the bottom. 

"What peace may we have? None! What home do we have? None! Better that our ancestors died in Ancalgon’s fire, that Elros drowned as a babe. Better that we had never been!"

Her skirts float about her and seaweed tickles her ankles. She has always felt safe here; since childhood the water has called to her. She longs for that safety again, for some promise of a future and for some sign of forgiveness for herself and her people. And instead the children dream.

"Why?" she demands. "If you would punish us, punish me! Damn me with my cousin or chain me in the depths. But leave them to what peace they can find. I beg you!"

And she _is_ begging now, not a queen or even an usurped queen, not an assassin or a woman grown but a child herself who is lost and afraid and alone.

"Please leave them be. If you will not help, just _leave us be_." 

She stays in the water until the tide rolls in and the whitecaps return, splashing over her until they knock her down in a familiar baptism. When Miriel rises from the water, running fingers through tangled, wet hair, she feels empty as the grave she should have filled long ago. The setting sun casts a long shadow on the rocky beach that spills out behind her like a coronation robe as she makes her way back to a place where even children suffer for her failures, and sleep itself holds no escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another bit from AU Miriel-survives-the-Downfall.


End file.
